Wednesday, November 12, 2014

We are pleased to welcome our newest team member Faria Rashid. Faria is an MSc student in Capacity Development and Extension with International Development Studies at the University of Guelph. She will be working with team member Dr. Helen Hambly on the Radio+ Working Group within the project.

Her past experience includes various development studies projects while she was in Bangladesh, including work with Oxfam, SIDA, IUCN, and ICDDR(B). She has a keen interest in the role of ICT in rural development and agriculture, and we welcome her to the project.

Friday, November 7, 2014

E-agriculture is an online forum.
It is part of the participatory
discussion on “Communication
for Development, community media and ICTs for family farming and rural
development”, organized by the Food and
Agriculture Organization of the United Nations(FAO) and the World Association of Community Radio Broadcasters(AMARC). From
22 September
to 6 October 2014, E-agriculture forum discussed five key
issues related to communication media and ICT tools. Their topics were framed
by the following questions:

How can communication, community media and
ICT tools support family farmers in their activities?

How can ICT tools and communication services
engage family farmers in accessing information and exchanging knowledge?

What are the barriers family farmers face
when using community media and other ICT tools?

What can be done at policy level to promote
the use of community media and ICTs, and improve rural communication services?

What are concrete actions that can be
undertaken to improve rural communication policies and services?

From these discussions our
SSHRC PDG project might learn that:

Communication, community
media and ICT tools support family farmers in their activities around the world.In the era of globalization, we need
to introduce these tools to the farming activities and farmers can use ICT
tools to communicate globally. Using ICT tools and equipment like community
radio or mobile phone, family farmers benefited in several ways. For example,
Michael Riggs, FAO’s Information Management Specialist for the Asia-Pacific
region, he shared a recently realized video https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0bpP5jbOEzE on
how mobile phones are being used by farmers in Myanmar.

Agriculture offices and
other farming institutions can share information about seeds, fertilizer and
weather forecasts with the farmers. Oumy Ndeye from Senegal, she highlighted
how weather forecasts and climate service helping farmers.http://ccafs.cgiar.org/blog/bridging-climate-forecasts-farmer-realities-story-seck-and-ousmane#.VE1UePnF8Ql. The
weather forecasting department of Senegal (ANACIM) and CCAFS are testing a
promising use of mobile phones and community radio to help the farmers to base
their critical decisions during the short and erratic raining season on timely
information about the weather.

As researchers or extension
workers we should not underestimate that farmers and their families can use ICT
for entertainment, and education. Like listening to music from the radio during
breaks in their work,ICT tools also can create
awareness among family farmers such health issues or early marriage. For
example community radio is providing
a voice to millions in rural Bangladesh and helping fight poverty and extremism.
http://khabarsouthasia.com/en_GB/articles/apwi/articles/features/2013/10/05/feature-01.The local radio station broadcast 95% of their
programs in local language, and the majority of their audience consists of
women.

Community media and ICT are
promoters of social and economic change in rural areas, providing access to
timely information to improve agricultural production and revenues. ICT also
helped in the training of rural communities’ farmer families about home gardens
and community forestry to ensure food security and create niche crop
innovations. For instance, Walther Ubau from Nicaragua, he shared how Nicaragua
has some considerable experience in indigenous communities benefiting from
community forestry. They have been projects in the Atlantic coast of the country.
Community leaders are trained for community management of forests, on issues
such as conformation of small forest enterprise and appropriate use of ICT to
market their products. Equally ICT has helped in the training of community
families about home gardens.

Most relevant to our SSHRC
PDG project is that through mobile SMS based services, ICT can provide farmers with
current information about weather or markets. ICT tools and communication
services engage family farmers in accessing information and exchanging
knowledge. For understanding what are ICT tools and communication services, farmer
training is needed. For better communication farmers can learn the two way uses
of mobile phones
in delivering SMS messages to farmers, receiving feedback or concerns. Radio is
a useful media for farmers. For example in Uganda women farmers get together in
groups of 30 in 12 sub counties of the community to listen, ask questions and
contribute to radio agricultural talk shows. This
example was posted by the E-agriculture forum coordinator Valeria Contessa is
currently working in FAO on TECA (Technology and practice for small
agricultural products.-http://teca.fao.org. She mentioned that through a partnership between the
Grameen Foundation and FAO, the TECA content is used to repackage information
and to share it with farmers in Uganda through a network of community knowledge
workers by using mobile phones. This allowed the Grameen Foundation in Uganda
to use information from TECA to reach more than 250,000 farmers via smart
phone.

The
E-agriculture forum participates agreed that ICT become very easy to
use even with limited technical knowledge. Almost anybody can use at least
some of the wide range of available ICT tools. ICT tools influence and motivate young farmers.
Through the ICT trainings from ICT center young farmer are introduced to the
digital world. Using the ICTs, farmers are able to know the local crop price
information, production techniques and new technologies and financing
opportunities. After getting ICT trainings, young farmers can start applying
the knowledge in agricultural work. Some of these applications of their
knowledge are in the area of best market prices, keeping records and find cropsin high demand etc.

In Summary, community media
and ICT tools are very helpful for the family farmers but it has some barriers
as well. This discussion forum identified 14 key obstacles:

Cost of purchasing mobile applications and its operation through mobile service providers is not affordable to farmers.

Quality of information like what types of information they should take.

Use of mobile phone services are still in very early stage. Basic functions like placing missed calls, making/receiving calls. Advanced use of services such as MMS/internet/value added service related to agriculture through mobile is very limited in some rural areas

Language barriers. It means rural people may know only their local language so when they want to use internet they face problems.

Privacy problem, especially for women when they use mobile.

Low literacy is a serious limiting factor for family farmers as it deprives them from accessing important information that is available in written format.

Poverty is a barrier for using ICT because some rural farmers cannot afford computer.

Low technical skills is also a problem. When social centers provide free internet, most rural farmers cannot use it by themselves.

Lack of infrastructure, like limited training institutes.

Lack of electricity, television, internet and community radio stations.

The absence of effective Public Private Partnership in linking ICT to agricultural development.

Let
us now consider the following question as colleagues of the SSHRC PDG project
which of the above mentioned opportunities and obstacles have we also
identified and addressed in our activities?

Saturday, October 4, 2014

We arrived in the Colombo area at the end of the week and took part in a colloquium at the LIRNEasia office on Oct. 3. We presented preliminary results of the campaigns and had a lengthy and productive discussion about the project overall, with helpful input from a number of perspectives.

Setting up for the LIRNEasia colloquium.

We introduced the notion of "proportionate participation" at the colloquium which is a term we have recently coined to describe the relationships between sponsors, tech stewards, technology, and communities within the scope of a campaign.

Although it is very much a nascent concept, the idea is that these four elements comprise a system of innovation that requires proportionate participation if it is to be inclusive and sustainable. We chose the term 'proportionate' to capture the notion that the type and amount of participation of any one of the elements is relative to the other elements.

So, for example, a robust and easy to use technology, will make it easier for tech stewards and communities to use it, thus reducing the burden of training. On the other hand, a community that is struggling with literacy challenges may require a greater role for the tech steward or the technology in establishing a useful and sustainable system of innovation within that community.

The idea is new but we will continue to work on it as we look more closely at the results of the campaigns.

The Sri Lanka Department of Export Agriculture (DOEA) sponsored two campaigns in the Kurunegala district, with ginger farmers in the north area and pepper farmers in the south area. Both campaigns were intended to improve the efficiency and timeliness of communication between DOEA extension offiicers and local farmers.

Both campaigns used text messaging and both showed that there was interest from farmers in this form of communication, despite challenges with using text messaging on their phones. Many of the older generation farmers said they needed help to use text messaging but found the information useful. They asked for a voice-based system to complement the SMS system. Extension officers indicated that the text messaging system had saved them time and effort when trying to communicate news and updates to their communities. The DOEA north tech steward was particularly active with the campaign.

DOEA has expressed interest in continuing its use of text messaging and expanding into a voice based system with Freedom Fone. We are also in discussion with the department about the possibility of working with Wayamba University of Sri Lanka to expand the number of campaigns and extend them into other regions of the country.

Friday, October 3, 2014

On Sept. 30, the team met with Rangiri radio to review the results of the radio+ campaign they had been running with FrontlineSMS. Rangiri is using the text messaging software to enhance its broadcast programming by making it possible for listeners to submit song requests through their mobile phones. While we had initially hoped that Rangiri would introduce this into its Thunetha farm radio show, the tech stewards at the the station decided to trial it with popular music programming. From all indications, the introduction of SMS-based requests has been a success with the station receiving about 150 per day across its three broadcast programs.

Rangiri radio has a three-person stewardship arrangement, with one individual handling incoming requests with FrontlineSMS (pictured above), another who relays the song requests to the on-air team, and a third who oversees the system.

In discussions with the tech stewards we learned of their preference for a voice-based system for its farm radio programming. Voice, it is felt, will be more suited to the audience preference and will provide material that can be broadcast over the air. As a result, we will we working with Rangiri in the coming weeks to deploy Freedom Fone at the station while they continue using FrontlineSMS for other programming.

On Sept. 29 we met with a farmer group in the Vergul area north of Batticaloa after clearing our visit with authorities from the Sri Lankan National Guard (the area is still closely monitored by the military after the conclusion of hostilities in 2009). We learned at the meeting that many of the farmers who had been initially registered in the campaign are now working elsewhere due to economic conditions in the area following a crop failure.

While the farmers expressed continued interest in using text messaging to communicate price information and news updates, there is a fundamental challenge with language in this area. Tamil is the main language and the current SMS system is not able to render these characters. To get around this, messages are composed in a form of phonetic Tamil using a latin character set. However, many farmers said they are unable to read latin characters, so there is a persistent barrier that will need to be addressed, most likely through the intorduction of a voice-based system.

Neverthless, a local leader (pictured above, second from left) expressed interest in continuing with some involvement in the project and generated some ideas with the farmers to introduce a news update service involving a local library. We will follow up but the challenges in this part of the country are significant and it is difficult to know if we can successfully kickstart another campaign at the moment.

Monday, September 29, 2014

Members of the ICT Rapid Prototyping Working Group are spending several days meeting with communities to examine the results of a set of recently concluded communication campaigns.

The campaigns form part of an action research strategy to explore the use and adoption of low cost ICTs for knowledge mobilization in agricultural communities of practice. A previous post describes the campaigns and the communities involved.

Day one involved a meeting with a community group in Kirunkullan, a village located a few kilometres south of Batticaloa, sponsored by Janathakshan (formerly Practical Action). This campaign centred on using text messages to relay price information to the local community in an effort to improve the return they have been getting on their produce. Overall the campaign demonstrated the feasibility of text messaging for making this possible.

It is not entirely clear from discussions with the technology stewards involved in this campaign as to whether the demand for price information is seasonal, or whether there is a call for it on an ongoing basis. However, the tech steward will need to continue to work with the community to promote the system and encourage individuals to organize and plan to report price information when they visit the market or otherwise receive market information. In this case, the technology can enhance current social practices of sharing information by making it easier to distribute to a large group relatively quickly.

One of the technology stewards on this campaign also asked about the possibility of using FrontlineSMS to coordinate text messaging with another project he is involved with through UN Habitat. This is an encouraging sign, inasmuch as it demonstrates that this individual is taking initiative to further innovate with the technology having had some initial experience with it.

A
series of field pilot studies termed as “campaigns”, involving
agriculture communities, were conducted in the Kurunegala, Matale, and
Batticaloa Districts in Sri Lanka. Farmers identified various knowledge
mobilization activities, ranging from exchanging local crop price
information, to alerting on elephant attack, to disease control, general
inquiries, announcements, so on and so forth. This
presentation will discuss the insights gained as well as challenges
faced by the research team in carrying out the campaigns, with a view to
developing a better understanding of key factors of partnership
development for promoting inclusive innovation among these communities
of practice.

Monday, September 8, 2014

Considerations when planning the next steps

As we enter into a discussion on the next steps of this
project, we have considered the use of more participatory methods or adopting
participatory/community-based perspective. The following blog entry highlights
some topics for discussion, particularly focused on participatory approaches
and inclusive innovation.

A participatory approach

A participatory approach can be used either with or without
a community-based approach. Our rapid prototyping process (based off of the
action research cycle) can be very participatory if stakeholders are involved
in each aspect of the process. Perhaps one of the first questions may be, to
what extent do we want a participatory approach moving forward? To what extent
should stakeholders be involved in the rapid prototyping process? Which
stakeholders? Whose participatory involvement do we want?

A participatory approach definitely has its strengths.

-Builds organizational capacity

-Helps ensure that a wide range of diverse
perspectives is considered,

Levels of (community) participation

Participation can be classified into 5 levels (www.community.eldis.org). There are
others who have developed levels of community participation, but this one is
fairly accessible:

Informing – there is clear communication
with community about the project

Consultation – the project gathers feedback
and ideas from the community, e.g. through focus groups and interviews. This
is an initial step towards benefiting from local expertise.

Deciding together – making decisions together,
ideas are brought forward from within the community, e.g. through project
committees and decision making initiatives. The community is involved in
some aspects of decision making process.

Acting Together – partnership with community
that involves planning and implementing the plan together. Power sharing.

Supporting independent
initiatives –
community is self-mobilized, simply rely on researcher/practitioner as a
consultant

Once we enter into levels 3, 4 and 5, it would be considered
participatory and if community is involved in those levels, it would be
considered community-based.

What level of community participation are we striving for
moving forward? What level of participation do we want from each stakeholders?

In developing a training program or education modules for
tech stewards, to what extent do we want technology stewards to engage the
participatory involvement of their communities? Perhaps technology stewards
should be trained also on participatory methods to use in their community? To
what extent are (or should) tech stewards representatives
of their community?

Community-based research

A general
description of community-based research (CBR) is:

“community-based
research is intended to empower communities and to give everyday people
influence over the direction of research and enable them to be a part of
decision making processes affecting them” (Sclove, Scammell & Holland,
1998)

There is a focus on the collaborative and equitable involvement of
community through various phases of the research. It seeks mutually beneficial
outcomes for all partners/stakeholders, but with a particular emphasis on
community outcomes/action. It is iterative and collaborative and could
complement our rapid prototyping process if desired.

While CBR is a useful method in many community contexts, it
is not necessarily the best fit for all community projects. As we’ve said
before, we can adopt aspects of CBR
without claiming to be doing CBR.

Inclusive innovation

Another, possibly more relevant theory for us to situate
ourselves is Inclusive Innovation. Richard Heeks (2013) describes inclusive
innovation as that which is designed specifically for those who are excluded. Further,
Heeks describes the “ladder of inclusive innovation”, providing a step-wise
approach to inclusive innovation (levels 1-6), with higher levels representing
greater inclusivity. It would be a
useful exercise for us to consider where the project currently is on the ladder
of inclusive innovation and where we aspire for it to be…then determine how we
get there. Do we want to align ourselves with the language of inclusive
innovation?

-Level 1/Intention: an innovation
is inclusive if the intention of that innovation is to address the needs or
wants or problems of the excluded group. This does not relate to any concrete
activity but merely the abstract motivation behind the innovation.

-Level 2/Consumption: an innovation
is inclusive if it is adopted and used by the excluded group. This requires
that innovation be developed into concrete goods or services; that these can be
accessed and afforded by the excluded group, and that it has the motivation and
capabilities to absorb the innovation. All of those stages could be seen as
sub-elements of this level of the inclusive innovation ladder, though all will
be required for consumption so they are not hierarchical sub-steps (as appear
in later levels).

-Level 3/Impact: an innovation
is inclusive if it has a positive impact on the livelihoods of the excluded
group. That positive impact may be understood in different ways. More
quantitative, economic perspectives would define this in terms of greater productivity
and/or greater welfare/utility (e.g. greater ability to consume). Other
perspectives would define the impact of innovation in terms of well-being,
livelihood assets, capabilities (in a Senian sense), or many other foundational
understandings of what development is. For those with concerns about
inequality, this could include a condition that the benefits were restricted to
the excluded group, or were greater than those achieved by ‘included’ groups
using the innovation. One can therefore differentiate an absolute vs. relative
notion of inclusive impact of innovation, the latter being a sub-step above the
former.

-Level 4/Process: an innovation
is inclusive if the excluded group is involved in the development of the
innovation. It is highly unlikely that the entire group could be involved so
this immediately shrinks down to “members of the excluded group”: a point taken
up further below. This level needs to be broken down according to the
sub-processes of innovation: invention, design, development, production,
distribution. These would create a set of sub-steps with, for example, an
assumption of greater value of inclusion in the upstream elements than the
downstream elements. Further complicating matters, the extent of involvement is
equated with different levels of inclusion. Again, there would be sub-steps
akin to those seen when discussing participation in development with higher
sub-steps representing deeper involvement. Borrowing from Arnstein’s (1969)
ladder of participation, sub-steps can include: being informed, being
consulted, collaborating, being empowered. controlling.

-Level 5/Structure: an innovation
is inclusive if it is created within a structure that is itself inclusive. The
argument here is that inclusive processes may be temporary or shallow in what
they achieve. Deep inclusion requires that the underlying institutions,
organisations and relations that make up an innovation system are inclusive.
This might require either significant structural reform of existing innovation
systems, or the creation of alternative innovation systems.

-Level 6/Post-Structure: an innovation
is inclusive if it is created within a frame of knowledge and discourse that is
itself inclusive. (Some) post-structuralists would argue that our underlying
frames of knowledge – even our very language – are the foundations of power
which determine societal outcomes. Only if the framings of key actors involved
in the innovation allow for inclusion of the excluded; only then can an
innovation be truly inclusive.

Where is our project on the ladder of inclusive innovation?

Identifying where we are on this ladder is not straight
forward. A case could be made that we are currently in the process of moving
from level 3 to level 4. The tendency of using a model that is a ladder or
levels, is that we place value on higher levels. But, do we aspire to reach a
higher level of inclusive innovation? Or perhaps we further develop how to
improve at our current level?

We will hopefully spend some time discussing this as we
review the campaigns together at the end of September.

Friday, August 1, 2014

(Sharing an important post from the iNARS listserve)

Asian agriculture and food chains (agri-food chains) are rapidly evolving to
meet local, national, regional and international markets’ needs. These needs
include providing easily accessible, affordable, safe, nutritious, healthy,
quality food and economically viable industrial feedstock, both produced
ethically in globally competitive markets within their own countries and for
export.

Emerging needs from Asian agri-food chains also include
agricultural commodities to be produced through sustainable means. Agri-food
chains are also increasingly being expected to contribute to the conservation
and spread of socio-cultural heritage and improving the quality of life in
rapidly urbanizing societies.

Information and Communication
Technologies (ICT) are rapidly transforming agri-food chains locally and
globally. They have the potential to make agri-food chains more productive,
sustainable and resilient. They can be used to improve the quality and safety of
products and to lower costs in complex food value chains.

This
facilitated e-discussion will consider how agri-food chains in Asia may develop
in the future (by 2030) and what roles will ICTs may play in their development.
The future development of agri-food chains in Asia may also give direction to
innovation in ICTs applied in these chains. This e-discussion will focus on what
futures may happen for Asian agri-food systems and ICTs through research,
innovation, changes in institutions, regulatory frameworks and organizations at
international, regional and national levels.

The outputs from these
e-discussions will feed into the one day forum on “Forward Thinking for ICT use
in Asian Agri-food Chains” at 9th Conference of the Asian Federation for
Information Technology in Agriculture - 2014.

We invite all
interested to please participate and contribute to this
e-discussion.

Tuesday, July 8, 2014

The survey team comprised Nuwan from LIRNEasia, myself from Wayamba University of Sri Lanka (WUSL) and team of students affiliated with the ICT Centre of WUSL. We surveyed the local communities affiliated with the Department of Export Agriculture (DOEA). Basically there are two campaigns at DOEA and it cover the Melsiripura and Rideegam Divisional Secretariats
of Kurunegala District. The previous survey tools (surveys with farmer communities in Batticaloa) were practiced.

Tuesday, June 24, 2014

There are four campaigns running
in different locations with the identified three sponsors namely Department of
Export Agriculture (DOEA), Rangiri Radio and Janathakshan. Each campaign runs
on a separate Frontlinesms instance. All technology stewards were trained for technologies used in campaign at the Wayamba University of Sri Lanka.

DOEA North campaign started on 08
April 2014. There were around 20 farmers registered in the system in same day.
The Frontlinesms instance is installed on a laptop computer at DOEA sub office
situated in Govijana Sewa Center in Melsiripura. Mr. Chandana is the tech-steward
operates there and Mrs. Gunasekara assisting him for official works. Both were
trained as Technology Stewards in Wayamba University of Sri Lanka. This
campaign main target audience is Ginger, Pepper and Cinnamon farmers.

DOEA South campaign started on 28
April 2014. This setup is installed on a desktop computer in DOEA main office,
Kurunegala. Mr. Mahendra and Mr. Upul serve as the tech stewards there. This
campaign main target audience is Ginger, Pepper and Cinnamon farmers. In this
season Ginger became most prominent export agriculture crop among farmers
because of having high market price in last season.

Janathakshan campaign started on
02 May 2014. Mr Kamalaraj serves as the tech stewards there.The Frontlinesms instance is initially
installed at RDS office building at Kathiraweli. It’s configured as solar
powering turnkey solution. Later this Frontlinesms instance is moved to the
tech-steward’s home at Batticaloa and now running it from there.

Rangiri campaign started on 06 May 2014. Mr. Buddhika, Mr.
Ranga and Mr. Dilanka serves as the tech stewards there.The Frontlinesms instance is installed on a
desktop at their office building at Dambulla. Basically this campaign
interacted with listener groups. They use this system to song request specially
to dedicate these songs to their friends and family members.